When you're hard drive fails, you order a new one online and then swap it out. Why can't we do that for biological parts as well? From DNA robots and "organs-on-a-chip" to nanobristles that grab-and-release drugs, this slideshow explores the two major goals of synthetic biology: to build new biological systems and re-engineer the existing ones from nonbiological components.

Image: Here actin filaments are nucleated in circle shapes (20–40 µm microns in diameter) using micropatterning (see next slide for details) and then imaged with epifluorescence microcopy.